Sending a marketing campaign

1. What a campaign is

A campaign is a one-off marketing email you compose and send to a group of your own clients, such as an announcement, a promotion, or a check-in with people you haven't seen in a while. It is not automatic and does not repeat on its own. You write it, choose who gets it, and send it.

• Campaigns are sent by email only. There is no marketing text-message broadcast today, only the automated booking texts covered in "Texting, consent and STOP".
• Sending one requires the "Manage business settings" permission, so an owner, an admin, or a team member you've granted that permission specifically.
• It's included free on Pro and Venue Pro. If you don't see Campaigns under Marketing in your sidebar, your plan doesn't include it and you haven't added it.

2. Who your campaign is allowed to reach

A campaign can only reach clients who have actually agreed to receive marketing from you. This isn't a setting you can override per send, it's built into how the audience is calculated every time, right up to the moment of sending.

• New clients who book through your online widget can tick their own opt-in checkbox at booking time, if you've switched that checkbox on (Settings, then Booking rules, on the Marketing & tracking tab).
• Your existing client list is covered by a one-time declaration, made on the same Booking rules page by an owner, an admin, or a team member with the Manage business settings permission, confirming everyone already on the list has agreed to hear from you or has a reasonable existing relationship with your business, in line with Australia's Spam Act 2003. That declaration only ever covers the list as it stood on the day you made it, not anyone who books afterwards.
• Anyone who has actively unsubscribed is always excluded, no matter which of the above applies.

The Booking rules page's Marketing consent card shows a live count of how many clients you may currently email, and updates the moment you make or withdraw the declaration. You can also unsubscribe a single client from marketing yourself, from their profile on the Clients page, if they ask you to by phone or in person.

3. Writing the message

Open Marketing > Campaigns, click New campaign, and you're in the compose screen. Your draft saves itself automatically as you type, there's no separate save button to remember.

• Subject line, required.
• Reply-to address, optional, if you want replies to land somewhere other than your usual notification inbox.
• Photo, optional, shown as a banner at the top of the email.
• Headline, optional.
• Message, the body of the email.
• A button, optional, either linking to your public booking page or to a custom URL of your own. If you add one, it needs its own label.

You can insert a detail into the subject, headline or message that fills in automatically per customer: their first name, their full name, your business name, or a link to your booking page. A live preview on the right shows exactly what a customer will see, including the unsubscribe footer every marketing email carries.

4. Choosing your audience

You target a campaign one of two ways: a segment, worked out automatically from booking history, or a tag, one you've already applied to clients yourself on the Clients page.

Whichever you pick, the compose screen shows a live "Will reach N people who can be emailed" count underneath it. That number already excludes anyone not covered by consent, so it only ever counts people you're genuinely allowed to send to.

5. Sending it, and what happens after

• Send a test to myself sends the email to your own account address, so you can check it before anyone else sees it.
• Send asks you to confirm how many people it will reach, then starts sending for real, straight away.
• Large lists send in the background in batches rather than all at once, so it can take a little while for everyone to receive it.

Once you click Send, the campaign locks and can no longer be edited. The Campaigns list shows its status as Draft, Sending, or Sent, plus a running count of how many recipients have actually been sent to out of the total. A client who unsubscribes while a send is still in progress is skipped automatically from that point on, they don't need to do anything extra to be excluded.